Ghost train
Mar. 3rd, 2010 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceWell, that was odd. I went for a walk downtown just now, and looked both ways at the level crossing* in hopes of a train, because I am a Primitive Boy and like to see the big things run by me. Lo, there were headlights looming; and even as I peered, the sirens wailed and the lights flashed and the gates came down on the crossing, and there was much rejoicing in the heart of the Chaz.
And the train ... didn't come. It sat at the station and waited. And after a minute the sirens failed and the lights gave up, the gates shrugged and lifted up their heads to let the actual traffic by.
And I lingered, and saw another train approaching the other way; and again there were lights and sirens and gates all three, and this time they meant it, and this time the train at the station decided that it was coming too.
And that was fab, because they met and passed actually on the crossing, and two behemoths together made the concrete and the clay beneath my feet begin to crumble**, and I guess the train had just been waiting for its friend. But what I want to know is, how did the gates know?
In other news: today I am being totally domestic and not working at all. I am planning dinner. I have made stock, and bread is rising. (It's strange, what the neighbourhood grocery stores here do and don't sell, compared to equivalents in the UK. Here they have three or four varieties of unbleached white bread flour - and no other bread flour at all. No wholemeal, no granary, no rye. In Morrison's I'd be lucky to find one good unbleached white, but I could come away with five or six different flours.)
What I am thinking at this time, I have broccoli sprues or sproutings from the farmers' market, which I shall steam and serve as a starter with smoked bacon croutons and a blue stilton and sour cream sauce. Then we have a chicken-and-fennel risotto, with mushrooms on the side; and finally a lemon pudding, sponge above and sauce below. Winter foods, because it's raining here and really not terribly warm.
Also also, clean dry clothes are dry and clean. In this house, l*undry is not a dirty word. I envy Karen her devices. I mean, yes, I too have a washing-machine: but one of these things is not like the other one. And my dryer is the banister that climbs the stairs.
Oh, and one further thing: on the whole and give or take, my advice would be not to bite your tongue so hard that it bleeds. [This week's message is brought to you courtesy of the Society for Lingual Recovery in the Face of Extraordinary Teeth.]
*Why do we-the-British call them level crossings? *thinks about it* Ah: presumably because the road is level with the rails, rather than being raised above on a bridge or sunk beneath in a tunnel. Still sounds odd, though. And what do other English-speaking peoples call them?
**It's okay, though: love will never die.
And the train ... didn't come. It sat at the station and waited. And after a minute the sirens failed and the lights gave up, the gates shrugged and lifted up their heads to let the actual traffic by.
And I lingered, and saw another train approaching the other way; and again there were lights and sirens and gates all three, and this time they meant it, and this time the train at the station decided that it was coming too.
And that was fab, because they met and passed actually on the crossing, and two behemoths together made the concrete and the clay beneath my feet begin to crumble**, and I guess the train had just been waiting for its friend. But what I want to know is, how did the gates know?
In other news: today I am being totally domestic and not working at all. I am planning dinner. I have made stock, and bread is rising. (It's strange, what the neighbourhood grocery stores here do and don't sell, compared to equivalents in the UK. Here they have three or four varieties of unbleached white bread flour - and no other bread flour at all. No wholemeal, no granary, no rye. In Morrison's I'd be lucky to find one good unbleached white, but I could come away with five or six different flours.)
What I am thinking at this time, I have broccoli sprues or sproutings from the farmers' market, which I shall steam and serve as a starter with smoked bacon croutons and a blue stilton and sour cream sauce. Then we have a chicken-and-fennel risotto, with mushrooms on the side; and finally a lemon pudding, sponge above and sauce below. Winter foods, because it's raining here and really not terribly warm.
Also also, clean dry clothes are dry and clean. In this house, l*undry is not a dirty word. I envy Karen her devices. I mean, yes, I too have a washing-machine: but one of these things is not like the other one. And my dryer is the banister that climbs the stairs.
Oh, and one further thing: on the whole and give or take, my advice would be not to bite your tongue so hard that it bleeds. [This week's message is brought to you courtesy of the Society for Lingual Recovery in the Face of Extraordinary Teeth.]
*Why do we-the-British call them level crossings? *thinks about it* Ah: presumably because the road is level with the rails, rather than being raised above on a bridge or sunk beneath in a tunnel. Still sounds odd, though. And what do other English-speaking peoples call them?
**It's okay, though: love will never die.